To add to this, those of you who believe in the abolition of copyrights should consider the following from today's New York Times:
The music industry argues that it cannot survive in its present form without additional intellectual property protection. There is some justification for this view. After the French Revolution, one of the first acts of the new National Assembly was to eliminate copyrights. Within a few years, only pornography and seditious material was being published. Though such material can apparently survive any intellectual property regime, the French had to reinstate copyrights to provide incentives to produce more substantive works.
"Ex post facto" law, as interpreted in the Constitution, is a retroactive criminal law that increases the penalty. Obviously, MS is not in criminal court, and so your argument of sacrificing an important principle is, in this case, invalid.
As far as "picks and chooses who is a criminal", that's called legal judgement. It's the foundation upon which our entire system is based:).
I was always under the impression that stealing is taking something that is not rightfully yours. Besides, hiding behind word choice is no better than Bill Clinton's semantic gymnastics (i.e., "that all depends on your definition of 'sex'"). Just my two cents:)
I don't believe so, and my reason for this is as follows: Napster's business model is based upon piracy. If there were no piracy, Napster would be so insignificant that it would not be commercially viable. If any ISP's business model were based exclusively on sustaining spam mailing lists, I would criticize them as well.
We own and control these masters, we feel that we're the ones that have the right to decide where they get used. It's a little bit, what we have called the Book-of-the-Month scenario, which is this whole thing about, it sort of ends up being the reverse; we're the ones who look like assholes for chasing after what we feel, for getting off the service. It's a little bit like the book-of-the-month analogy, where you get a book sent to your mailbox once a month. And if you don't return it within 7 days, you have to pay for it. Do you know what I mean? Are we assholes for wanting to get off this service that I was never asked if I wanted to be part of in the first place?
For all the work that's been done in the grassroots tech community to promote the use of opt-in email lists rather than unsolicited spam, doesn't this sound like a plea along similar lines? At one time or another, I'm sure that most/.ers have complained about being added to a service that they didn't authorize. Sounds like a similar fundamental issue here.
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The music industry argues that it cannot survive in its present form without additional intellectual property protection. There is some justification for this view. After the French Revolution, one of the first acts of the new National Assembly was to eliminate copyrights. Within a few years, only pornography and seditious material was being published. Though such material can apparently survive any intellectual property regime, the French had to reinstate copyrights to provide incentives to produce more substantive works.
"Ex post facto" law, as interpreted in the Constitution, is a retroactive criminal law that increases the penalty. Obviously, MS is not in criminal court, and so your argument of sacrificing an important principle is, in this case, invalid.
As far as "picks and chooses who is a criminal", that's called legal judgement. It's the foundation upon which our entire system is based :).
-AV
I was always under the impression that stealing is taking something that is not rightfully yours. Besides, hiding behind word choice is no better than Bill Clinton's semantic gymnastics (i.e., "that all depends on your definition of 'sex'"). Just my two cents :)
-AV
I don't believe so, and my reason for this is as follows: Napster's business model is based upon piracy. If there were no piracy, Napster would be so insignificant that it would not be commercially viable. If any ISP's business model were based exclusively on sustaining spam mailing lists, I would criticize them as well.
For all the work that's been done in the grassroots tech community to promote the use of opt-in email lists rather than unsolicited spam, doesn't this sound like a plea along similar lines? At one time or another, I'm sure that most /.ers have complained about being added to a service that they didn't authorize. Sounds like a similar fundamental issue here.
-AV